Long-Run Effects of Rainfall Shocks: An evaluation of the effects of in utero negative rainfall shocks on children's cognitive ability in rural Kenya

Sammanfattning: Shocks in utero can have lasting effects on an individual's physical and socio-economic outcomes. By merging direct rainfall data at the district-level with an individual-level dataset on children's education and socio-economic factors I create a proxy for in utero income shock with negative rainfall to evaluate the effect on Kenyan children's cognitive score in rural districts. I find that a drought leads to a decrease of 2.60% of the standard deviation fall in children's cognitive score. These results are robust for gender and age, as well as the definition of the shock and rural districts. The result suggests that policies aimed at protecting rural households against shocks and alleviating their effects could save large amounts in social costs in the long run.